On the margins of the crowd, sitting on the steps leading to the house, was a boy with blond hair stroking a cat that had settled in his lap. She could tell that he had been watching her, but had looked away just as she noticed. He was the one person here she didn't know, but she did know that his name was Mads Gilstrup, that he was the grandchild of the people who had owned Østgård before, that he was a couple of years older than her and that the Gilstrup family was wealthy. He was attractive, in fact, but there was something solitary about him. And what was he doing here anyway? He had been there the previous night, walking around with an angry frown on his face, not talking to anyone. She had felt his eyes on her a few times. Everyone looked at her this year. That was new, too.
She was jerked out of these thoughts by Robert taking her hand, putting something in it and saying: 'Come to the barn when the general-in-waiting has finished. I've got something to show you.'
Then he stood up and walked off, and she looked down into her hand and almost screamed. With one hand over her mouth, she dropped it into the grass. It was a bumblebee. It could still move, despite not having legs or wings.
At last Rikard finished, and she sat watching her parents and Robert and Jon's moving towards the tables where the coffee was. They were both what Army people in their respective Oslo congregations called 'strong families', and she knew watchful eyes were on her.
She walked towards the outside toilet. Once she was round the corner where no one could see her, she scurried in the direction of the barn.
'Do you know what this is?' said Robert with the smile in his eyes and the deep voice he had not had the summer before.
He was lying on his back in the hay whittling a tree root with the penknife he always carried in his belt.
Then he held it up and she saw what it was. She had seen drawings. She hoped it was too dark for him to see her blushes again.
'No,' she lied, sitting beside him in the hay.
And he gave her that teasing look of his, as if he knew something about her she didn't even know herself. She returned his gaze and fell back on her elbows.
'This is where it goes,' he said, and in an instant his hand was up her dress. She could feel the hard tree root against the inside of her thigh and before she could close her legs, it was touching her pants. His breath was hot on her neck.
'No, Robert,' she whispered.
'But I made it for you,' he wheezed in return.
'Stop. I don't want to.'
'Are you saying no? To me?'
She caught her breath and was unable either to answer or to scream because at that moment they heard Jon's voice from the barn door: 'Robert! No, Robert!'
She felt him relax, let go and the tree root was left between her clenched thighs as he withdrew his hand.
'Come here!' Jon said, as though talking to a disobedient dog.
With a chuckle Robert got up, winked at her and ran out into the sun to his brother.
She sat up and brushed the hay off her, feeling both relieved and ashamed at the same time. Relieved because Jon had spoilt their crazy game. Ashamed because he seemed to think it was more than that: a game.
Later, during grace before their evening meal, she had looked up straight into Robert's brown eyes and seen his lips form one word. She didn't know what it was, but she had started to giggle. He was mad! And she was . . . well, what was she? Mad, too. Mad. And in love? Yes, in love, precisely that. And not in the way she had been when she was twelve or thirteen. Now she was fourteen and this was bigger. More important. And more exciting.
She could feel the laughter bubbling up inside her as she lay there trying to stare through the roof.
Auntie Sara grunted and stopped snoring beneath the window. Something screeched. An owl?
She needed to pee.
She didn't feel like going out, but she had to. Had to walk through the dewy grass past the barn, which was dark and quite a different proposition in the middle of the night. She closed her eyes, but it didn't help. She crept out of her sleeping bag, slipped on some sandals and tiptoed over to the door.
A few stars had appeared in the sky, but they would soon go when day broke in the east in an hour's time. The cool air caressed her skin as she scampered along listening to the unidentifiable sounds of the night. Insects that stayed quiet during the day. Animals hunting. Rikard said he had seen foxes in the distant copse. Or perhaps the animals were the same ones that were out during the day, they just made different sounds. They changed. Shed their skins, as it were.
The outside toilet stood alone on a small mound behind the barn. She watched it grow in size as she came closer. The strange, crooked hut had been made with untreated wooden boards that had warped, split and turned grey. No windows, a heart on the door. The worst thing about the toilet was that you never knew if anyone was already in there.